Nielsen Reports Smart Phone Usage Share for Q2 2011

According to the market researchers at Nielsen, Google's Android OS has made incredible gains over the past year, and now dominates the US smart phone market with 39 percent usage share. (Android accounted for just 29 percent in the same quarter a year ago.) Apple's iPhone is number two with 28 percent, but that OS has only seen a tiny bump despite great sales; it controlled 27 percent of the market a year previous.

Rounding out the top five is RIM Blackberry (20 percent, and the biggest year over year fall), Windows Phone (9 percent, though that includes Windows Mobile users too), and HP/webOS and Nokia, which are tied with 2 percent each.

Nielsen was nice enough to supply a great chart too, which breaks out the top three Android vendors (and the top 2 Windows Phone vendors).

So. What are we to make of this?

Windows Phone is actually done a bit since the first quarter, when it accounted for 10 percent usage share. But at one-third the iPhone, I mean come on. That's really not too shabby.

And Apple seems to be falling by the wayside when compared to Android. But when you add iPad and iPod touch sales to the iPhone, you see a very healthy iOS market overall. I don't see iOS going anything close to downward anytime soon.

Discuss this Article 7

"Apple seems to be falling by the wayside when compared to Android." Hmmm.... if by falling you mean contenting to be the most profitable then yes... falling they are. I would guess Google would give up the 11% market share difference in exchange for the profit makes on the iPhone.

Yes, Apple is more profitable because it RIPS OFF CONSUMERS. They over-charge for their devices and have a lemming following that opens their wallets for each new release.
Apple lovers also pay more for their data plans.
People will catch on, and iPhone's marketshare will continue to decline.

"People will catch on, and iPhone's marketshare will continue to decline."
If you actually read the article you are posting on you would see the the iPhone's marketshare went up not down. So.... at best you could predict a future decline but it wouldn't be a continuation but a start and the credibility of your prognostication abilities are pretty much undercut when you trying to predict what will happen in a market that you don't understand in its present state.

Keep in mind that the (pitiful) 9% that WinThings occupy is actually WinMo 6 AND WP7 combined. And the fact that HTC is the biggest chunk in that segment betrays that fact that the majority of those devices are actually WinMo 6.

The big take away here is that Apple is now the #1 manufacturer of smart-phones and a disproportionate amount of the revenue and profit. Who would have thought! What's interesting to me watching this market is the number of "buy one get one free" deals offered for Android and RIM devices, add to that the variety of devices and price points, and still this is the best others can do against Apple selling just two (4 and 3GS)? Not bad!